2min chapter

The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy cover image

Interview with Robin Hanson

The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy

CHAPTER

The Importance of Social Norms

Tae Ranger was the New Zealand Maori that wandered up and down the coast of New Zealand badgering for sure. They all felt obligated to give what was asked until the point where they thought he had asked too much. And I believe they just killed him, which is a common solution to these sorts of things. So, you have to be aware of violating these norms of asking for too much.

00:00
Speaker 3
So, you talk about I found the discussion about social norms to just fantastic. Can you tell the story if you can remember it of what had he said, Tae Ranger, the the the Maori billager. If you remember that one.
Speaker 1
No, I'm not remembering that one at the following.
Speaker 3
He was the New Zealand Maori that wandered up and down the coast of New Zealand
Speaker 1
badgering for sure. Oh, yes. So, so there was a norm of being generous to strangers and at doing, you know, what strangers ask. And so a particular person was taking advantage of this generosity. He was going on and asking for a lot and they all felt obligated to give what was asked until the point where they thought he had asked too much. And they did the ancient human thing of getting together and saying, hey, we got a problem here. What should we do about it. And I believe they just killed him, which is a common solution to these sorts of things. So, you have to be aware of violating these norms of asking for too much. And a lot of norms that we have that we enforce with relatively low stakes because people go along with low stakes and then it seems like they're not that important. And the way you find out how important they are is when you start to violate them more strongly. And then you'll see the guns, bigger guns that people will pull out to deal with the situation and this is an ex traumatic example of how we really care a lot about many of these norms, even if we pretend usually that it's not that.

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